Network quotes

View Quote After living with you for the last six months, I'm turning into one of your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real, actual life going on here.

View Quote I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. Fifty share, easy.

View Quote I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news. It was all sex, scandal, brutal crime, sports, children with incurable diseases, and lost puppies. So, I don't think I'll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism when you're right down on the streets soliciting audiences like the rest of us. Look, all I'm saying is if you're going to hustle, at least do it right.

View Quote She does have one script in which I kill myself: An adapted for television version of "Anna Karenina", where she's Count Vronsky and I'm Anna.

View Quote By tomorrow, he'll have a 50 share, maybe even a 60. Howard Beale is processed instant God, and right now, it looks like he may just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.

View Quote [immediately after making love with Max] What's really bugging me now is my daytime programming. NBC's got a lock on daytime - lousy game shows - and I'd like to bust them. I'm thinking of doing a homosexual soap opera, "The ****s": The heart-rending saga about a woman hopelessly in love with her husband's mistress.

View Quote [shouting] Son of a bitch. We've struck the motherlode!

View Quote [flipping through the newspaper] You know, Barbara, the Arabs have decided to jack up the price of oil another 20%... uh, the CIA has been caught opening Senator Humphrey's mail... there's a civil war in Angola... another one in Beirut... the, uh, New York City's still facing default... they finally caught up with Patricia Hearst... and the whole front page of the "Daily News" is Howard Beale.

View Quote Four hours ago I was the Sun God at CCA, Mr. Jensen's handpicked golden boy, the heir apparent. Now I'm a man without a corporation.

View Quote Max Schumacher: I'm the man that you presumably love. I'm a part of your life. I live here. I'm real. You can't switch to another station.
Diana Christensen: Well, what exactly is it you want me to do?
Max Schumacher: I just want you to love me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. You understand that, don't you?
Diana Christensen: [weakly] I don't know how to do that.

View Quote Nelson Chaney: The affiliates won't carry it.
Frank Hackett: The affiliates will kiss your ass if you can hand them a hit show.

View Quote And I've got some GOD DAMN SURPRISES FOR YOU TOO, SCHUMACHER! I'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOUR CRUDDY DIVISION, AND ITS ANNUAL 33-MILLION DOLLAR DEFICIT!

View Quote Louise Schumacher: Do you love her?
Max Schumacher: I don't know how I feel. I'm grateful I can feel anything.
[his wife flinches]
Max Schumacher: I know I'm obsessed with her.
Louise Schumacher: Then say it. You keep telling me that you're obsessed, you're infatuated. Say that you're in love with her.
Max Schumacher: [pauses] I'm in love with her.

View Quote I argued that television was a volatile industry in which success and failure were determined week by week; Mr. Jensen does not like volatile industries and suggested with a certain sinister silkiness that volatility in business usually reflected bad management.

View Quote Good morning, Mr. Beale. They tell me you're a madman.